Consider the following exchange and the implicature that B's reply creates. Identify which of Grice's maxims is responsible for the implicature.
[Context: there are 50 students enrolled in a course.]
A: Who got A+ in the course?
B: Yufei and Katya.
(Implicature: No other student got A+ in the course.)

Question

Consider the following exchange and the implicature that B's reply creates. Identify which of Grice's maxims is responsible for the implicature.
[Context: there are 50 students enrolled in a course.]
A: Who got A+ in the course? 
B: Yufei and Katya.
(Implicature: No other student got A+ in the course.)

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

We start by recalling Grice’s four maxims that govern cooperative conversation: Quantity, Quality, Relation (Relevance), and Manner.

Option 1: Maxim of Manner. This maxim concerns clarity and avoidance of obscurity or ambiguity, ensuring information is presented in an orderly and unambiguous way. The implicature in the exchange is not primarily about avoiding vagueness or confusion, but about how much information is being supplied, so this option does not correctly explain the implicature here.

Option 2: Maxim of Quality. This maxim asks speakers to be truthful and to not provide assertions for which there is insufficient evidence. The line spoken by B is indeed truthful within the context, but the implicature—denoting that no other student got A+—derives from how much information is conveyed, not from a failure or misstatement of truth. Therefore, this maxim doesn’t capture the source of the implied meaning.

Option 3: Maxim of Relation (Relevance). This maxim requires that contributions be relevant to the topic under discussion. While B’s answer is relevant to the question of who got A+, the specific implicature that no other student got A+ stems from the boundary of relevance—i.e., providing exactly who earned the A+ without listing others. However, the classic pattern of the implied meaning in this scenario aligns more closely with the quantity of information rather than mere relevance alone.

Option 4: Maxim of Quantity. This maxim concerns providing as much information as needed, and no more than necessary: enough to be informative, but not extra. In this exchange, B names exactly the students who received A+, and nothing more. This gives the precise amount of information required to answer the question and, by not mentioning any others, conveys the implicature that no other students obtained an A+. The implied meaning arises precisely because the speaker adheres to (and optimally applies) the constraint of not over- or under-sharing information.

In summary, the implicature—“No other student got A+ in the course”—emerges from the way B’s reply adheres to the Maxim of Quantity, providing just enough information to identify the A+ recipients and thereby implying the absence of any others with A+. The other maxims do not provide the core mechanism for this specific implicature in this context.

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